At James B. Edwards (JBE) Elementary, The School of Global Leadership, our mission is to provide authentic, challenging, creative experiences in a supportive and engaging environment in order to develop global leaders with strong character, ready to serve their communities.

This year we added the 2nd Step Curriculum for CD - 1st grade. Students are taught to identify and deal with their emotions, as well as how to communicate and collaborate with peers.

According to Review 360, our web-based behavior management system, in grades CD-1st, the average number of students who received an office referral was 4. That figure jumped to 11 students in 2nd grade. As JBE expands the implementation of the 2nd Step curriculum to all grade levels and students receive direct instruction in social-emotional skills and those skills are reinforced and expanded upon year after year, the number of 2nd-5th-grade students receiving an office referral is expected to decrease.

In addition to learning the 2nd Step curriculum, teachers participated in ELA professional development such as “Text Dependent Analysis” and “Interactive Read Alouds.” If you step into a JBE classroom, you might hear students turning and discussing a deep question about a text, or students writing opinion letters to the town council, or students actually building boats. These examples demonstrate our belief that the deepest, most long-lasting learning happens when students are being creative, critically thinking, communicating and collaborating with others in authentic experiences. Thanks to our faculty's commitment to this belief, there was much to celebrate about the 2017-2018 school year.

The percent of all JBE students who made at least a year’s growth on MAP reading increased from 53.4% to 62.3% this year. Specifically:

     2nd-grade students meeting their MAP reading goal increased from 29.8% to 51%

     4th-grade students meeting their MAP reading goal increased from 49.5% to 53%

     5th-grade students meeting their MAP reading goal increased from 52.9% to 66%

The percent of all JBE students who met their MAP math goal went up as well:

     Kindergarten students meeting their MAP math goal increased from 40% to 71%

     1st-grade students meeting their MAP math goal increased from 78.2% to 82%

We are proud of our strong history of academic excellence and we look forward to continuing to build on that foundation!

Robin Fountain, Principal

Lauren Vickers, SIC Chair